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    mind underwent threw him into a state more dreadful than even that of debasement from which he had escaped . As , from , a condition of tyrannical oppression , under a long line of licentious sovereigns , the French people rushed into the wildness of anarchy ,

    so , from a low state of mind , in which everything is believed or professed to be believed , in which it might , with perfect truth , be said , that a man dared not say his soul was his own , they threw off altogether the profession of religion , despised its injunctions , and laughed at its rites , —a circumstance which has been deeply regretted .

    Still they owned a sovereign power . On the altar on which an object resembling a heathen divinity had been placed , Reason was exalted . The suggestions of the human intellect , in the maddest state of its irritation , were regarded as the rule of the social compact and the guide of their lawgivers . Man , in his general character , is not a being made to submit to no superior . Even in his civil capacity he must have a ruler , though it be one of his own choosing , and he the least exceptionable ; and above him there is One to whose decrees he must

    submit , and whose will he must perform . It is wise for him to shape his course under the conviction that there is One who rules over all ; and no society of mankind has yet been known which has long denied the authority of that One . Harassed , indeed , as the French nation long were by the evils under which they groaned , it was not a matter of surprise to many that , from a state of abject submission , they had hastily run

    into the opposite extreme of licentiousness . The spring which is strongly bent will fly off in the contrary direction . From the profession of belief in what was absurd , contradictory , and debasing to the mind , a large proportion of the people passed into a state of perfect infidelity , admitting no religious creed , and acknowledging no divine authority . The frequent recurrence of changes in the government , the perpetual interference of the

    governments around them , and the violent and arbitrary parties which sprang up from time to time in the capital of the kingdom , kept the entire people in such a state of agitation during a period of forty years , that all this time we have heard little of the thoughts of their minds on the subject of religion , and have seen scarcely any efforts openly made to establish a sense of it among them . We are not , however , to suppose that the French nation

    have been , during this , long period , so unlike other people as not to indulge some thoughts on a subject of such high importance to human happiness . Religion was not so entirely crushed by the violence of revolutionary measures as not still to live in the hearts of many , even amidst the ruins of dismantled churches and the suppression of all outward signs of devotion . Although , until of late , little can be said of its revival , there are strong indications now apparent ia many parts of the king ^

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    Oil the State of Religion in Trance : 125

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1832, page 125, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1806/page/53/